// KOTAKU — GAMING
Zelda: Ocarina Of Time Remake’s Castle Town Has A Scene That Will Haunt Me Forever
Nintendo Switch 2The Legend of ZeldaThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
I’ve been seeing some chatter online about a specific scene in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time that’s extremely beloved by longtime fans. It’s easy to miss: if you visit the Hyrule Castle Town back alleys after Zelda and Impa flee from Ganondorf, but before the time skip, you can find a soldier on the ground slumped against the wall. In the original, if you speak to him, he asks if you’re the “boy from the forest” and, in a pained stutter, tells you that Ganondorf has betrayed the king and that Zelda has escaped, but that she wanted to give something to you before she left.
His final words direct you to the Temple of Time, the text speed slowing as he finishes his line, before he shudders and fully collapses. Trying to speak to him further prompts Navi to say, “He’s not moving anymore….”, and that’s it. The soldier’s dead.
This moment has been cited by many as a prime example (among very many!) of the “darkness” of the original Ocarina of Time. It’s an otherwise noble and normal NPC dying a painful death in a back alley due to the cruelty of the villain, in front of the child protagonist who, up to this point, has only seriously fought soulless monsters. He’s not yet had to face down death in this particularly tragic way.
In the remake, however, the soldier doesn’t die. He stays alive, and you can talk to him as many times as you like to have him direct you to the Temple of Time. I believe this is just one of a cavalcade of examples of Nintendo being terrified that the player is going to get lost in the remake somehow and not know where to go. What if you forget you’re supposed to go to the Temple? He’s there to remind you, again and again, seemingly merely exhausted instead of in agony.
About the soldier in the back alley byu/dampflokfreund inOcarinaOfTime
People are bringing this up as evidence that the remake has somehow blunted the “darkness” of the original Ocarina of Time. Defanged it a bit, suggesting a more modern fear from Nintendo of exposing children to grim themes. I saw people say Nintendo “censored” itself here, or that this may have been related to “ratings.” Setting aside questions over whether or not some vague content meter of “darkness” or “maturity” is the measure of anything really, I want to push back on the idea that this moment in Castle Town has been stripped of its power: the soldier lives, yes. But for me, the remake transforms visiting Castle Town between Zelda’s departure and Link’s first experience of time travel in a way that makes it one of the most haunting and sad moments in the entire game…especially if you know what’s coming.
When you emerge in Castle Town as Adult Link in either game, it’s in ruins. Dark clouds hover over the square, and Hyrule Castle looms ominously, now the seat of Ganondorf’s power. The once-bustling square is now home to multiple horrifying Redead enemies, heavily implying that some the townsfolk may have been transformed into these health-sucking zombies. You can find most of the major NPCs from Castle Town now living in Kakariko Village, but not all of them make it there. The implication is that Ganondorf essentially enacted a massacre on the town before installing himself as king, and only a handful of refugees escaped to tell the tale.
The original Ocarina of Time had some conversationalists in Castle Town right before the timeskip, but many of the NPCs had only a little or even no dialogue, and just served as background to suggest a bustling town square. A few of those characters express some anxiety about the guy on the horse who just galloped through, if you talk to them in the brief window between Zelda’s escape and Link’s transformation. It’s the only time you can hear this special dialogue, but most of it is pretty humdrum—just folks remarking on the horses that galloped through.
The remake’s Castle Town is populated with essentially all of the same NPCs that existed in the